Cluster printing involves the use of multiple machines to complete a print job. For example, a print job may have a very large number of pages, so printing may be distributed to multiple printing machines for faster completion time. A print job may have some pages requiring color, which can be distributed to a color printer while other pages not requiring color (BW pages) can be distributed to a black-and-white only printer. In this way, the run time of the color printer is not wasted on BW pages. Also, a print job may involve printing and a subsequent finishing operation, such as stapling, collating, hole punching, folding, and/or binding. The printing operation can be distributed to a printer, and the finishing operation can be distributed to a dedicated finishing machine. Splitting operations in this way can help balance operations in a print shop to reduce idle time and help avoid workflow bottlenecks at a particular machine.
A print server may perform print management to identify printing and finishing machines appropriate for a print job. The process of identifying appropriate machines for cluster printing can become complicated when the server must work with a large number of possible printing and finishing machines having diverse capabilities and constraints. The job ticket created by a conventional server, even with the help of user input, may be missing a parameter required by a printing or finishing machine. Also, the job ticket may have many parameters which do not apply to a printing or finishing machine. Situations like these and others may decrease the efficiency of the print server.
Another issue with conventional cluster print management is that new models of printing and finishing machines are constantly being developed, and it is contemplated that capabilities not previously seen could be introduced. To handle a new model, the cluster print management software in the server usually needs to be updated by a software engineer, which can increases the complexity of the software, which can in turn make it more time consuming to make updates for new models in the future.
The issues related to proper job ticket creation and efficiency discussed above for cluster printing also apply to print jobs that are not subject to cluster printing. Even when a client user does not designate a print job for cluster printing, issues related to missing parameters and/or unnecessary parameters can decrease efficiency significantly, particularly in high volume printing operations.